


We Should Probably Talk

by Fenix21



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amulet Fic, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s11e20 Don't Call Me Shurley, Gen, episode coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 01:27:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6779683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam's had a secret for a very long time, and it's time it got out in the open.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Should Probably Talk

**Author's Note:**

> Because I am absolutely determined to believe that amulet has been in Sam's possession the entire time, and that the look on Dean's face when he saw it wasn't 'How did that get there?' but 'Really, Sam? You had it all along?'

_I should probably put this away. You'll never guess where this has been this entire time_.

—Chuck Shurley aka God

 

'We should probably talk.'

Yeah, well, if that wasn't the freakin' understatement of the century, but it wasn't what Dean was most concerned about at the moment.

'Yeah. We should,' he managed past the lump of chaotic, tangled up emotion caught in his throat.

Chuck opened his mouth to speak, but Dean turned a sharp ninety degrees and looked up at Sam, ignoring Chuck entirely. He held the still brightly burning amulet up between them. Sam squinted in the fierce light. 

'Oh. Yeah.' Chuck flicked his finger down like he was shutting off a switch and the light went out. 'Better?'

Sam gaped. 'You—?'

Chuck shrugged, smiling sheepishly. 'God. One of the perks.'

Sam scowled hard, lips pursing, getting revved up to a really phenomenal bitch fit if Dean's Sam-radar was still calibrated right, but he wasn't concerned with that either. He closed his fist around the warm weight in his palm, more familiar than he could imagine after all these years, and punched Sam lightly in the chest.

Sam's attention swung back to Dean, his expression crumpling almost immediately into something that very much resembled himself near tears thirty-years ago. Dean's heart turned over in his chest and he swallowed hard.

'Sammy?'

Sam bit his lower lip for a second. 'Dean, please. I didn't— I mean, I couldn't just—'

'All this time?' Dean rasped.

Sam nodded reluctantly, shoved his hands deep in his jacket pockets, and pulled his shoulders up around his ears, reminding Dean again of the little boy he had once been. 

'I, uh, I actually gave it to Bobby, right after, to keep safe. Just in case you ever, you know…'

Dean unfurled his fingers and stared down at the little brass charm. 'But…why? I mean, it didn't work—'

'That's not why you threw it away.'

Sam's voice was incredibly soft, accepting, lacking any kind of accusation at all, but Dean still felt like he'd taken a blade between the ribs straight to the heart. He reached out a hand and gripped the shoulder of Sam's jacket, couldn't bring himself to raise his eyes, because there weren't words for this, and it hurt so badly to look at that moment so close after so long. On the extensive list of regrets in his life, that afternoon was very near the top.

'You… But you have it. Now.' Dean dared to glance up. 'Why?'

Sam shrugged again, cheeks cresting pink. 'When I thought my visions were coming from...God.' He sliced a hard look at Chuck. 'I got it back out, started carrying it around, thought maybe, on the off chance, he might be close enough and it would work this time.'

Dean nodded. It was logical. The kid had always been a hopeless optimist. Dean would have been ten times dead—or more—if Sam hadn't been around these last years to keep him going, shoving him toward the next step, always there to convince him that things were going to be better. He looked down at the amulet again, leather cord threaded through his fingers tight—and he didn't remember doing that—imprint of the tiny horns in his palm because he'd been holding it so hard. 

'I'm sorry, Dean.'

Dean's gaze snapped back up. 'For what?'

Sam shook his head. 'I know it was stupid, and I remember what you said, 'I don't need a symbol to remind me how I feel about my brother,' and it shouldn't have mattered so much, but I…I couldn't let it go. When you threw it away, Dean, I felt like…like you'd thrown away a piece of us, and ever since then,' Sam's voice started to crack and he ducked his head, swiping at his eyes. 'Ever since, I've been trying to get it back, and I don't— I don't—'

'Sam.' Dean's hand fisted tighter in his brother's jacket, drawing him down until their foreheads knocked together. 'Sam, I… It was a dick move. It was. But I was hurtin' so bad, and I just wanted—I wanted to hurt you back.'

'I know,' Sam breathed. 

His hands had crept up to knot in Dean's shirttails, hanging on like he had done decades past when he was hurt, or scared, or sad, and Dean could just fold him up in his arms and make it all right again. It had stopped being that easy a very long time ago.

'But I missed the point, Sammy,' Dean said, voice a wrecked whisper. 'I lost my focus and forgot to see the forest for the trees.' Sam made a tiny questioning sound in the back of his throat, and Dean's hand moved to the back of Sam's neck, forced his head up so he could look his little brother in the eye. 'We were in the same Heaven. And even if I couldn't see the memories of me in you, it shouldn't have mattered, because we were together. That should have said enough, _been_ enough.'

Dean swallowed thickly and leaned back, uncoiling the amulet to hang from its cord between them. 'And you're right, about what I said then, it _is_ only a symbol.' Dean carefully hooked his thumbs in the cord and lifted it over his head, settling the amulet back in its place nearly over his heart. 'But we above all people know how much power a symbol can hold, don't we?'

Sam nodded. He was close to sobbing, eyes red with tears he was trying valiantly to hold back, nose running a little. Dean reached to cradle Sam's face between his hands, rubbed his thumbs against that strong, stubbled jaw, and then bent Sam down low enough that he could plant a warm, dry kiss to his forehead.

'That piece, Sammy?' Dean whispered against Sam's mussed hair that had fallen down across his forehead and into his eyes. 'Never lost it.' Sam lifted his head to look, searching, into Dean's face. Dean smiled. 'Shit got in the way, but it never got lost, and as long as I'm breathin', little brother, there's nothin' gonna get between us again. Ever.'

Sam folded up into Dean's arms and buried his face in his brother's collar. Dean could feel the heat of his tears and the shuddering sobs through his whole body. He rested his cheek against Sam's head and let him cry because sometimes that was the only way to properly say the things that needed said.

'You know, _this_ is why I love you guys.'

Dean started a little. He'd almost forgotten they had any observers. Or at least one. Sam raised up, turned away to wipe his face dry, and Dean glared at Chuck.

Chuck smiled, and Dean supposed he had a right to look condescending. It was hard to be God and not look that way at anyone. 

'I don't know what my archangels were thinking trying to manipulate you two into existence.' He rocked back on his heels, looking smug. 'But they certainly didn't get the result they intended.' 

'What's that supposed to mean?' Dean growled.

Chuck looked around, like he was taking in the sights, turned in a slow circle with his hands in his pockets, finally came back to look calmly at Dean. 'People talk about love all the time. They fall in and out of it, think they'll live or die by it. It's one of the human race's defining features, but what you two have? That's a step beyond, I think, and they couldn't have anticipated that.' He smiled indulgently at Dean's confused scowl. 'I mean, God is standing right in front of you. You've been looking for me for what? Five years? I show up, and what do you do. You put the world, and me, on pause for _this.'_

' _This_ what?' Dean snarled.

'Each other,' Chuck said quietly. 'Because that's what you do, have always done, _will_ always do. You said it yourself, 'nothing past or present' that you would ever put before the love you have for Sam, and I'm pretty sure Sam feels the same. 

'It's rare, Dean. So much rarer than you might think to find love that runs that strong and that deep, and well,' Chuck shrugged again. 'I can't let that be destroyed. So, I guess…you are _my_ weakness.'

'Is that why you saved us?' Sam asked. 'Why you showed up now? Saved the town?'

'That and because of Dean,' Chuck answered.

'Because of me?'

Chuck offered another indulgent smile. 'Don't you remember what your friend Cas said, 'the righteous man began it, and the righteous man will end it.''

'But Sam ended it,' Dean said. 'By jumping in the Cage. I had nothin' to do with it.'

'It didn't end there, Dean. You know that. You foiled the plan, like you usually do, and so the story wasn't over,' Chuck correctly gently. 'It still isn't. But you prayed, Dean. You finally asked for help. And here I am.'

Dean frowned for a second and then stared, his words in the station coming back to him. 

_Stop this, you dick!_

'Granted, it wasn't a very _nice_ prayer, but it was honest,' Chuck admitted. 'It's the honest ones I pay attention to, the ones that don't even realize what they're asking, or that they even _are_ asking. Those are the ones who are worth it.'

'You _are_ a dick,' Sam said.

'God,' Chuck grinned. 'I'm allowed.' 

He looked around briefly, watching the confusion abate and people slide back into the normality of their lives, pushing the near cataclysm that had befallen them so far back in their minds that it would be forgotten by lunchtime tomorrow. Another amazing trait in humans: to rationalize what cannot be explained right out of existence. He shook his head in wonderment and turned back to Sam and Dean. 

'So, everything appears to be back in order here.' He looked at them expectantly. 'Like I said, we should probably talk.'


End file.
